page_title: Francoist Catalonia
section_title: Anti-Catalan hostility
hierarchical_section_title: Francoist Catalonia / Anti-Catalan hostility
caption_attribution_description: Tomba de Lluís Companys al Fossar de la Pedrera
context_page_description: Francoism in Catalonia was established within Francoist Spain between 1939 and 1975, following the Spanish Civil War and post-war Francoist repression. Francisco Franco's regime replaced Revolutionary Catalonia after the Catalonia Offensive at the end of the war. The dictatorship in Catalonia complemented the suppression of democratic freedoms with the repression of Catalan culture. Its totalitarian character and its unifying objectives meant the imposition of a single culture and a single language, Castillian. The regime was specifically anti-Catalan, but this did not stop the development of a Catalan Francoism that was forged during the war and fed by victory.
  Francoism meant, in Catalonia as with the rest of Spain, the cancellation of democratic freedoms, the prohibition and persecution of political parties, the closure of the free press, and the elimination of leftist organisations. In addition, the Statute of Autonomy and its associated institutions were abolished, and the Catalan language and culture were systematically persecuted, at least to begin with, in public and even initially in private.
context_section_description: Catalonia suffered the most fierce engagements during the civil war, as seen in several examples. In Tarragona, in January 1939, mass was held by a canon from Salamanca cathedral, José Artero. During the sermon he cried: "Catalan dogs! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you." ("¡Perros catalanes! No sois dignos del sol que os alumbra.") 
  Regarding the men who entered and marched through Barcelona, Franco said the honour was not "because they had fought better, but because they were those who felt more hatred. That is, more hatred towards Catalonia and Catalans." ("porque hubieran luchado mejor, sino porque eran los que sentían más odio. Es decir, más odio hacia Cataluña y los catalanes.")
  A close friend of Franco, Victor Ruiz Albéniz, published an article in which he demanded that Catalonia receive "a Biblical punishment (Sodom and Gomarrah) to purify the red city, the headquarters of anarchism and separatism as the only remedy to remove these two cancers by relentless cauterisation" ("un castigo bíblico (Sodoma y Gomorra) para purificar la ciudad roja, la sede del anarquismo y separatismo como único remedio para extirpar esos dos cánceres por termocauterio implacable"), while for Serrano Suñer, brother-in-law of Franco and Minister of the Interior, Catalan nationalism was "an illness" ("una enfermedad.")
  The man appointed as civil governor of  Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros, said that "Spain was raised, with as much or more force against the dismembered statutes as against Communism and that any tolerance of regionalism would again lead to the same processes of putrefaction that we have just surgically removed." ("España se alzó, con tanta o más fuerza contra los Estatutos desmembrados que contra el comunismo y que cualquier tolerancia del regionalismo llevaría otra vez a los mismos procesos de putrefacción que acabamos de extirpar quirúrgicamente.")
  Even Catalan conservatives, such as Francesc Cambó, were themselves frightened by Franco's hatred and spirit of  revenge. Cambó wrote of Franco in his  diary: "As if he did not feel or understand the miserable, desperate situation in which Spain finds itself and only thinks about his victory, he feels the need to travel the whole country (...) like a bullfighter to gather applause, cigars, hats and some scarce American." ("Como si no sintiera ni comprendiera la situación miserable, desesperada, en que se encuentra España y no pensara más que en su victoria, siente la necesidad de recorrer todo el país (...) como un torero para recoger aplausos, cigarros, sombreros y alguna americana escasa.")
  The 2nd president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Lluís Companys, went into exile in France, like many others, in January 1939. The Spanish authorities asked for him to be extradited to Germany. The questions remains whether he was detained by the Gestapo or the German military police, known as the Wehrmacht. In any case, he was detained on August 13,  1940 and immediately deported to Franco's Spain.
  After a summary court martial without due process, he was executed on October 15, 1940, at Montjuïc Castle. Since then there have been many calls to cancel that judgement, without success.
caption: Tomb of Lluís Companys at Fossar de la Pedrera.
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